A Complete Guide to Running Amazon Lightning Deals

When you are touring the Amazon site, whether as a seller or a buyer, you have probably come across a Today Deals Link on the features page. When you open the page, you will see a list of products with incredible discounts. This page is the Amazon Gold Box Deals page, also known as the lightning deals page for sellers.

What is the Amazon lightning deal? Amazon lightning deals are promotional deals run by Amazon that provide opportunities to sellers and buyers to sell and buy discounted products in a short period. It is a time-sensitive promotional discount program, generally between 4-6 hours, run by Amazon. Amazon lightning deals attract a lot of traffic and are a great way for sellers to improve their sales.

Creating an Amazon Lightning Deal

Creating lightning deals is an easy process. However, you need to take note of some factors before you do it. These factors include product eligibility, star rating, discount percentage, categories, and more.

To give you a more concrete guideline, here’s what you need to have before your Amazon golden box deal is approved:

Your products should have a more than a 3 stars rating.

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You should give a minimum of 20% discount.

The products should be within accepted categories and under Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA).

You need to be prime eligible.

It is vital to include product variations to increase chances of a deal to pass eligibility.

The inventory quantities of your products should conform to the minimum deal quantity set by Amazon.

Amazon sets the maximum price of the lightning deals. You do not have full control over the amazon lightning deals schedule. You can only specify the week, but Amazon provides you with the day and time of running your deal. You are entitled to pay a fee to submit a product for a lightning deal. The nonrefundable fee is charged once the deal runs. It does not depend on the deals' performance. Lastly, it is not possible to run an Amazon deal more than once within 7 days.

Once you have mastered the above factors, you can now go ahead and create your lightning deal by following the steps below:

Step one: Log into your Seller Central accountStep two: Click on the advertising tabStep three: Select the Lightning Deals tabStep four: A lightning deals dashboard will appear. Select the Create tab and click on Edit.Step five: Go ahead and set the deal price, the product quantities, the deals schedule and applicable variations of the product.

Ensure your product pages are optimized before submitting the deals. Amazon lightning deals are subject to time limits, and Amazon changes the terms of the deal frequently. It is vital that you are quick when submitting a deal to make sure you meet the Amazon lightning eligibility requirements before they change.

How to Monitor Lighting Deal Submission

The lightning deal dashboard allows you to monitor the deal status. The dashboard provides various tools that will help you maintain a successful deal. These tools include:

Draft status: brings to attention an error during setup of a deal. It gives you the chance to edit the mistake.

Needs edits status: helps you to note areas of the deal that requires editing.

Under review status: shows that the deal is on the waiting list and is in need of Amazon’s approval.

Pending status: means the deal is eligible to set requirements and is awaiting scheduling.

Upcoming or Approved Status: implies the deal is scheduled for a specific date and time.

Suppressed status: indicates that the deal you submitted doesn’t meet eligibility requirements. It gives you the chance to make the necessary changes before amazon cancels the deal.

How to Cancel a Lightning Deal

Amazon has a cancellation option if you feel the need to cancel your lightning deal. Canceling a deal is possible inconsiderate of whether the deal is in progress or not. However, there are some rules to take note of:

You are charged a fee if you cancel a deal less than 25 hours to the start of the deal schedule.

Last minute cancellations are susceptible to blacklisting from future deal creations.

Frequent canceling of deals can also lead to blacklisting by Amazon which will prevent you from creating lightning deals in the future.

How to Find Lightning Deals on Amazon

Amazon runs many deals every day. You can find the deals on the today’s deals page on the site. Some of the deals you will find include: (1) deals of the day that run for 24 hours, (2) lightning deals that are limited to a few hours, (3) savings and sales which are continuing deals for specific brands or items, and (4) Prime early access deals which are lightning deals available to Prime members 30 minutes before the deal goes live officially. These deals are all open to the public except the Prime early access deals.

Amazon also hosts a sales event annually famously known as the Prime Day. The Amazon Prime day, also known as the online shopping black Friday, is a more-than-a-day long prime lightning deals exclusively available to the Amazon Prime members.

How to become a Prime member? You can sign up for the Amazon Prime free trial. You are required to provide some personal information while signing up. You don’t need to worry about information leak as there is a privacy policy put in place to protect your personal information.
Visit the Amazon help and customer service site to learn more about Amazon Prime.

When do Amazon Lightning Deals Start?

Amazon Lightning Deals do not have a specific time when they start, but you can stay up-to-date with deals that will be available soon. This is made possible through the upcoming deals section on the Amazon site. The upcoming deals section gives you the chance to view upcoming deals that will go live in 24 hours’ time.

To monitor a deal before the deal goes live, follow the steps below:

Step one: Go to today’s deals page.Step two: Click on the upcoming tab.Step three: Select watch this deal alongside the deal you want to monitor.Step four: Make sure the notification is on for you to receive push notifications.

How to Get Items During Amazon Lightning Deals Period

Once the deals go live, select the item you wish to purchase and add the item to your cart. Remember lightning deals are restricted to a specific time limit. Therefore, it is important that you buy the item a few minutes after adding it to your shopping cart. The deal is made available to the next customer in a waitlist if you fail to complete the purchase of the item within the set time frame.

Lightning deals are frantically grabbed. If a deal you are interested in is no longer available for you, you can still have a chance to get the deal by joining the waitlist of that particular item. Click on the join the waitlist tab adjacent to the particular deal, and you can potentially snatch the deal if the previous customer fails to make a purchase. However, joining the waitlist does not warrant a purchase of the deal. It is typically a second chance from Amazon in the midst of the lightning deals frenzy.

Lightning deals are only available for one customer per deal until all the inventories are no longer available or when the promotional period ends. There is no possibility that two customers claim the same deal at the same Amazon lightning deals period.

Advantages of Amazon Lightning Deals

Lightning deals are only available for a short period. Despite the short time frame, lightning deals provide some benefits to both the sellers and the buyers too.

For sellers, lightning deals benefit them in the following ways:

It is a great way to market yourself especially if you are a new seller on Amazon.it gives you a lot of exposure within a short period.

The halo effect comes into play, and the traffic in the lightning deals page exposes your merchandise catalogs to buyers. This helps to increase sales after the end of a lightning deal especially to buyers that missed out on the deal or return customers from the previous Amazon lightning deal.

It is a great way to clear out your inventories.

It is also an easy way to introduce a new product and test its success.

Conclusion

For buyers, it is a chance to get once in a lifetime discounts on fantastic products. There might still be more to Amazon Lightning Deals that you need to know. However, these are the basics of what is the lightning deal on Amazon and how you can run it.